Ten flags in Shanghai

Political and economic considerations have weighed in deciding membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Dmitri Kosyrev Shanghai

Three things struck a prominent Russian participant in the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Shanghai: ten banners displayed at the entrance; a very responsible and non-belligerent Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad; and the generally businesslike mood of all the participants.

Each of the facts mentioned hide not just double but multiple meanings.

Let us start with the national flags. The closest analogue to the SCO is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is hardly surprising, as the anonymous people credited with the concept of SCO tailored it after that  regional organisation. But ASEAN, after its 39 years of existence, has a well-structured system of core membership, summit partners and dialogue partners. On the other hand, SCO has six full-scale members (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrghizia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia), and four observer countries (India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan). Practically, all the four observers have expressed a desire – repeated at the Shanghai summit – to become a full-scale member.

But the least that can be said about the mood of the six full-scale SCO members regarding the enlargement of their ranks is "not now". This was unanimously manifested at the Russian foreign minister's meeting in Shanghai a month ago, ironing out the summit's agenda. “Maybe never” was perhaps an extreme idea voiced by mainly the Kazakhs at the closed door meeting of experts in Moscow, where only Russian and Kazakh officials took part. "Never say never", their colleagues responded, begging anonymity.

The reason for all of this is that smaller and weaker SCO members, Kyrghizia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan perhaps are apprehensive of being sidelined and neglected within the organisation, if too many big boys join in. The word "neglected" smells strongly of money. If you are a Russian or a Chinese political strategist who thinks that the main reason for SCO’s existence is blocking the US out of Central Asia, then all you need is to have all the 10 participants in – and a dozen or more above that. But if you are a Tajik or Uzbek, then you will probably have to keep in mind that security is only one of many goals of the organisation, whose primary goal is the economic development of Central Asia.

SCO’s bureaucracy has been clogged with documents of late, with the economic plans becoming the victim. There are plainly too many plans in the pipeline that SCO’s secretariat in Beijing just cannot handle properly. The addition of new members not only means additional paperwork but also reworking the economic plan. For such reasons, a decision to give the secretariat additional powers was taken at the Shanghai summit. The chair passed from China to Kazakhstan with the Kazakh SCO secretary-general expected to move things forward decisively.

We will come back to economic plans later on, but in the meantime we just have to be honest and confess that the "not now" faction has merged with the "maybe never" faction in stating that political considerations may be equally important when the enlargement of the membership is decided upon.

Afghanistan's national flag had not been in sight in Shanghai, but the country's President Hamid Karzai was there, since Kabul also participates in SCO's work. A special SCO-Afghanistan working group has been formed for that. "Karzai’, says an expert from the Moscow seminar, “came to Shanghai to say one thing: the US military presence in his country is needed for all the Central Asian stability. He had a point but there is another point which he inadvertently made: we cannot admit Afghanistan into SCO because we'll have an American stooge there as a result."

So who is saying that SCO is not an anti-US block? "I still say just that,” responds the expert, “but look at our present state of things: here we sit, ensuring political stability for Central Asia – and you cannot deny that SCO has already achieved this, with security coordination and military exercise. But we still cannot get our act together in economy — so we go on ensuring stability for American, or European, or any other investments. Does not make sense, does it?"

So the idea is that while USA is still sitting without a coherent Central Asian policy, SCO should use this lull and push its economic plans. And then – yes, accept any other partner in business field like ASEAN. There may not be much time left, since US diplomacy has suddenly become very active vis-a-vis the SCO. Multiple plans to create alternative organisations are in the offing. There has also been a flurry of calls from Washington, including a few from Condoleezza Rice. Some of them have been made to Shanghai itself, the source says. It is for the first time that the US has strongly suggested that it should be invited to SCO — as an observer or on any other acceptable basis.

For such reasons, a new note thus has been sounded in expert opinions about the admittance of new members. Are we admitting US friends and allies, and if so what shall they do in our meetings, where any country has a veto power? Non-participation of India's prime minister in the Shanghai summit may look as a good or a very bad move in this respect. "I am straight from Washington, and they do not conceal that they want to insert India into SCO as their ally," argued another expert at the Moscow seminar. "And I'm straight from Delhi, and the people there are adamant that they'll play their game, not the US one," countered his colleague, while the rest looked on very undecided.

In this milieu, the winner in Shanghai was obviously the Iranian President Ahmadinejad. For the first time in all his term, he was not grandstanding or threatening the US or Israel; he ignored them. Ahmadinejad came to Shanghai to speak about his country’s economic ideas on Central Asia, his plans to discuss the oil and gas and other projects with SCO members. And the day after the Shanghai summit he announced that Iran may yet accept the nuclear deal proposals on the part of the West plus Russia and China.

Much diplomatic effort therefore was, in fact, spent to achieve that result. That businesslike attitude was exactly what the SCO wanted from Iran and is a model of what it unanimously wants from its observer states in the near future – that is, plenty of economic action that will show what this or that country wants to do in Central Asia, besides playing political games.

Dmitri Mezentsev, a Russian senator, has been elected in Shanghai as the head of the newly-created SCO Business Council. The council's headquarters will be in Moscow. According to him, “there are business realities in Central Asia, we'll stick to them. Besides the plan of action comprising 123 points, we have to think about the dangerous discrepancy between the rich and poor in the region, mind education, human contacts and so many other things which, together, are called development.”

The very first meeting of the council in Shanghai has also seen separate deals discussed and initiated, concludes Mesentsev, but most of them are about Central Asia and therefore achieve the desired goal.

The author is RIA Novosti political analyst